Five for the EOM

THE GOOD EMPLOYER

They wash my uniforms,

They give me a bus pass,

They provide lunch,

Whatever’s on the menu for the day,

From filet mignon

To octopus to

All kinds of different things.

THE FUTURE IS YOURS*

*With qualifying dream.

BONERS AND BIG LOTS

Fuck me I need the hours

She said at the Hiring Event.

Save 10 percent on men’s vitality supplements.

Get more mattress for less.

ANYTHING ELSE OR ES TODO

The Double Dog Dare Ya is back,

Beauty bar and genius bar in one

Sacred vestibule of rare, imported spirits,

A fresh new French twist

In chic coastal ambiance.

All kinds of bomb ass vibes,

Tags and fiats,

Hymns and heresies.

The effects are cumulative,

Billable at premium rates.

He had a thing for 

Stylish and savings savvy

Cis male bassoonists.

Dick. Nick. Rick.

“Dessert!” gasped Ja’Kobi.

TA’EN

Alphabets of languages yet unspoken,

Where ‘neath,

Moored o’er, 

The deep fryer roared

When she walked in.

I’m all Wait hold up hey.

But it was ta’en.

She’s like

Buy your own biscuits.

Alas, I ne’er neared.

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

In Peter Puget's Sound

LUNCH WAS OFTEN

Sometimes more often.

I THINK IT’S FAIR TO SAY

Except like yeah.

A WORLD WITH NO 3X ALWAYS POINTS?

Not in my lifetime.

MEASURABLE PRECIPITATION

We kind of need it.

THERE WERE LIKE FIVE PEOPLE

Trying to get our Uber.

IT’S NOT EVEN TWELVE YET

Isn’t that funny?

LAST DAY FOR FREE EASTER CANDY

Was yesterday.

GREAT BLUE HERON GULPS STAGHORN SCULPIN 

In Peter Puget’s sound.

YOU KNOW HOW I GET

On the red carpet.

LEGEND

#Youarehere

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

 

Along the Strand

Howler monkeys 

Leveraged in the 

Brittle green leaves

Of fisherman’s wharf

Where me and my covenmates

Ran the three-legged race,

Ended up doing prism time.

I came across a study

And they’re like, OK, so.

Regular or scented?

Interacting with content

In a chandlery at seaport village

Can make you crazy.

I want to be myself again.

To lean into simple,

Beautiful,

A name, some numbers,

A free trombone with every townhome

Plus additional gutter protection

When purchased on iconic credit cards.

Frowning frowned upon, saturnine is out

The girls had passion fruit on their table

And we thought “Wow.”

Wacky foreshadowing is the app to have.

We art walked through pumpkin spice

Dewey-eyed to devil-may-care.

Count the bars.

A kind of mine minstrel mirrors mirth type thing,

Flamboyant and flamgirlant.

Boisterous and girlsterous.

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

I'll Be Switched

 

BEFORE CLIMATE CHANGE

For several days

Oh honey I 

One day when

By early afternoon

It hadn’t rained

Hours later we

Discovered hidden 

Icons in Oahu

It was easy

In a way

With silly sticks 

And tuning forks

Gayer than usual,

But in denial, no.

A LOBO INTROSPECTS

Why I

Big city born

Urban raised

Megalopopli lived in

Still say 

See here

What in thunder

I’ll be switched

Yonder is MaryLou.

POUNDING BLANCA

Heat on the tarmac

And when I earn the privilege of

Putting that ring on her finger

I love it when you

Keep lyin’ like that, 

It “doth unfix my hair.”*

Sleep like a mogul

If only this were Shinjuku

I’d be king of the world

Well then pretend.

It’s super easy.

How much Tokyo girlfriend for a week cost?

(*from Shakespeare, somewhere)

 

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

Ages and Stages

EMERGING AND LEGACY VOICES

Stylish, fuel efficient, and absolutely reliable.

Couplets with dread in the white spaces.

A residency in fishnet stockings.

Dark offerings, expressive aggro,

The banality of gender.

Approaching the sonnet with weapons drawn.

At the cabin

Pursuant to Article Six

Your celebrity fix just got better.

On the cape

Ibid,

Because it was already like the third infraction.

Me, personally,

Like I’m 

Like this

Every single day.

I think yes but no

Each and every time.

ALMOST SIXTY

John Steinbeck was almost sixty

He set out on his Travels with Charley trip.

Captain Billy was almost sixty

Before he got his first tattoo.

I was almost sixty

When I testified 

In front of the kind of jury 

That don’t hand out palmes d’or.

I went reasonably method,

Summoning something new to say

And a new way of saying it.

You wouldn’t have recognized me.

Luckily my sister-in-law was the judge.

She was almost sixty and 

I appealed to her, I said

Can interstellar touring be far behind?

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

Ephemera

JUNIOR AND GUEST

Two nude dudes

Drinking trackside

Discarding hearts

Sacrificing knights

The track begins to vibrate

Dancing sugar plums

The sleepers become excited 

The crossing gate arms concede

The rails begin to squeal

Cheering the rolling museum of graffiti*

By the time the arms signal touchdown

Dudes be neckin’ up a storm

The slam comes home

Mate

*(Junior has a lifetime pass allowing him free admission plus one guest)

DIFFERENT

In Tokyo a flower can break your heart.

My living bath towel rolled its eyes.

You must get over such notions.

It makes people queer.

Imagination is for the young.

That’s what everybody says.

FOUR A.M.: THINKING GREEN, THINKING CLEAN

Before all hell has had a chance to break loose

Stove light on low.

I’ve got my coffee.

Crickets ticking.

The mind wanders. 

High red leather booths vine-ripened by cocktail lighting,

The princesses of family-owned businesses.

Vibin’ and bumpin’ with the brazenest of flesh,

Legs waxed eloquent, the right to bare arms.

And when it returns,

The refrigerator is on a tirade

Slurping, hacking, 

The cats are tweeting out

To the birds.

I’m grinning like a frog.

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

WENZZET SPOZETO HIT?

Darryl had proven

Another traveler had

Actually I too

By then we

For more than

Time was Tasha’s

Her brother Bernardo

He never once

It hardly mattered

Early one morning

We turned left

Coco was shy

Then Jerzy stopped

Looking back I

I think maybe

Nellie said oh

Right after she

Shortly after I

Manny hit send

Teddy was crouched

Augustus sat up

I sat down

Bethanee was becoming

Sally then appeared

Once again I

Luke slipped quickly

It had begun

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

Choice Bits (an ongoing series)

W.C. Fields

Interviewer: If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?

W.C. Fields: I’d live over a saloon.

Virginia Woolf

“For the truth is…that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment. They hunt in packs. Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness. They desert the fallen.” 

Thomas Hardy

This sentence in Far From the Madding Crowd is part of a description of a dysfunctional wall clock:

“The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to.”

Audre Lorde

From Chosen Poems – Old and New

First, she asks:

“If we hate the rush hour subways

who ride them every day

why hasn’t there been a New York City Subway Riot”

Then, she answers her own question:

“…hope is counter-revolutionary

Pressure cooks

but we have not exploded

…watering down each trip’s fury

is the someday foolish hope

that at the next stop

some door will open for us

to fresh air and light and home.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

From August 1914

These are some of the thoughts of a Russian general during WWII.

“That wildly joyous, bestially joyous sensation of victory.  Victory over whom? Victory for what? The morning’s victors had spent the rest of the day as sitting targets.”

“Trying to give himself up had proved even more dangerous than fighting to the last. That was war for you—you couldn’t even quit it, couldn’t even cut loose from it.”

“There was, of course, a long queue of officers entitled to promotion by length of service, proven incompetence, and connections at court.”

“He nodded, forgivingly, understandingly, gratefully, and rode slowly on. His horse also seemed to nod, bending its neck low.”

“He must carry on acting (fighting) with the lightheartedness of despair.” 

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

The Academy

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

What I’m writing they ain’t buying,

And the better I’ve gotten,

The less is being boughten.

I’on’t understand.

A THREE-GOD PANEL 

They accuse me of 

Two diferent information

of lie every public speaking

cant even form a coherrent centanses 

little long write his demeta ridled mind. 

My answers ease judged inadequate

But no questions was asked!!!!

Just din eyed my appeal

I did not enjoying it

THE REMOTE LEARNER TAKES A KNEE

Jumble U

That scrambled 

World school

Of pretense

False and true

Formative texts

Sleek retellings

Deadnaming

Dedicated

Misgendering

Medicated

A susurrus of streams

Streams X5

Vile to where 

I thought about it and went

Touchdown Jesus!

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

AS NATURE INTENDED

But it had

Then he said

Instead of going

I thought oh

I asked if

I decided I

The week before

Actually strike that

A week later

I couldn’t resist

We stood still

Then one summer

The problem was

We had left

Maybe the weather

The road ended

In the meantime

I was astounded

Two days later

It was quiet

It was clear

It wasn’t much

But I wouldn’t

I was walking

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

MASS META NEE TUFF

Flush with hyperbole from The Institute for Advance Praise,

Buzzing like an orchestra of violas,

I’m already high as a kite with a two-hour flight ahead of me.

And that’s just the scherzo presto.

Which goes to show you

Rarity is no exception.

Candy and I are texting back and forth

Allegro con brio.

I had this like massive epiphany.

Like a door being kicked in

Quite literally.

That it’s existential doesn’t begin to tell the story.

No I said to her I said

All’s fucked that ends fucked. 

Not even the referee can stop the bout.

And while two rights don’t make a wrong

Nothing could be further

From everything than the truth.

And when they’re gone, they’re gone.

Which is why I feel, frankly

Tomorrow looks to be insane.

Of course when it comes to that, yes, I go

Early bird gets the discount.

You don’t want to miss your last chance.

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.